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Birds are migrating
Have you ever wished you could fly free as a bird, and migrate to warmer climes for the winter?
No Donald Trump to build a wall to stop you (though walls can be a problem for some birds). No Suella Braverman to rail against your ‘invasion’, saying ‘stop the boats’ (though farmers may not be happy if their crops are raided). No “passports, please”. You’d be above all that. But it isn’t all plain flying.
14 October is World Migratory Bird Day.
The birds may not know that, but many of them are migrating right now, though some go earlier or later. Some migrate to find warmer weather. Some migrate to find safer breeding grounds. Others because food is running short where they are. For example, waxwings are nomadic, flying to places where fruit is most abundant. Some years large flocks cross over to Britain from Europe, other years they stay closer to home. Some don’t migrate at all, in some cases because humans provide food, whether on bird feeders or rubbish tips or in gardens or harvested fields full of fallen seed. Some simply move down from the mountains into the valleys with the onset of winter, as do grey wagtails, or follow their frozen rivers to the coast.
A bird looking down on the earth passing below will likely see a very different scene than its long-ago ancestors did when they migrated. First came the agricultural revolution…